Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving’s wildly popular “Uncle Drew” Pepsi commercial, in which Irving dons a ton of makeup in order to portray an older man, and then schools basketball players in pickup games. Irving’s “Uncle Drew” character will hit the big screens as a full-length film, reports Justin Kroll of Variety:
Sources tell Variety that Temple Hill Entertainment has acquired the feature film rights to Irving’s “Uncle Drew” Pepsi commercials. “Skiptrace” scribe Jay Longino is set to write the script and Irving is attached to reprise the role of Drew.
Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, and John Fischer will produce the film, described as a love letter to basketball. The original Pepsi Max advertisements showed Irving, in full make-up, playing a 70-plus-year-old man, Drew, who would show up to pick-up basketball games and school kids half his age, while also reminiscing about how the game used to be played.
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“Kyrie and the team of people behind them — guys like Marc Gilbar and Lou Arbetter at Pepsi — did an incredible job of creating a character and a world that people responded to almost instantaneously,” Longino said. “There’s an old Nike commercial that talks about how many shots Michael Jordan missed in his career. He’s obviously remembered for all of the game-winners he made but the reality is he missed 26 of them. That commercial has always stuck with me and its theme is certainly present throughout the script.”
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“We’ve sat down together twice in the last few months. He knows the character inside and out, and just being around him when he has all the makeup on has been really informative for me,” Longino said. “And he’ll definitely be chiming in on what he thinks is working in the script and what isn’t.”
It sounds like there will be some high-profile guest stars from the NBA world:
“I can’t name names just yet but if you’re a fan of the NBA, both its past and its present, you should leave with a pretty big smile on your face,” Longino said.
